Tuesday, July 29, 2008

Red Sox Fan Meets Voyce O'Reisen

VO: This is your cleanup hitter, the second half of one of the best 3-4 combos in history, right?

RSF: Yeah.

VO: The guy with the 500 home runs, the guy who brought you two championships after you lived your whole life without seeing one?

RSF: Yeah, but I just can't take his antics anymore. It's not worth it.

VO: What antics?

RSF: Well, he doesn't work for his money. You never know when he's gonna show up to play.

VO: Manny's consistently played in more games each year than most of his teammates.

RSF: Yeah, but the Yanks come to town, and Manny hides, fakes an injury.

VO: He's played more games against the Yanks than any other team, with over 50 homers against them in about 200 games, and a .319 batting average and .615 slugging average. And he does not fake injuries. He loves to play ball.

RSF: Yeah, but in the playoffs, we're gonna need this guy, and I don't know if he's gonna decide to play or not.

VO: He's hit .321 with the Red Sox in the playoffs, with 11 HR in 43 games. With 31 walks, too. And two rings.

RSF: But what's he done this year? He's clearly declining. He just can't get it done anymore.

VO: He had one bad year--last year. (A year in which his team won the World Series with him hitting .348 in the playoffs.) And almost every guy in the majors would kill for Manny's "bad year." His OBP was identical to Derek Jeter's last year, and Jeter somehow finished 11th in the MVP voting. This year, he's already just about reached last year's home run total by the end of July, and is hitting .300. In fact, he's hit over .290 every year for the last 13 seasons. Hey, did you even see those Rolling Rallies?

RSF: Huh?

VO: Nothing. Please continue.

RSF: The guy has a bad attitude.

VO: Have you ever seen him not grinning ear to ear?

RSF: Well look at the way he carries himself. Long hair, loose clothing...

VO: And how is this a negative?

RSF: It's just not classy. When I show my kids a ballplayer, I show him Derek Jeter.

VO: How long has it been since he's won a ring?

RSF: At least Jeter is a Gold Glover. Manny is absolutely horrible in the field.

VO: Have you watched him play the field?

RSF: Well, I mean, every time he goes after a ball, my buddies all yell out, "Take your time, there, Manny!" Why would they do that?

VO: Maybe they're retarded.

RSF: But the guy will be on the ground sometimes, rolling around.

VO: Would you prefer he didn't dive for balls? And do you realize that if a replay of one craaaazy play is shown a thousand times, it still means the play only happened once?

RSF: No, no, look, he just, I don't know, rubs me the wrong way...he goes around fighting with everybody, distracting the team, and just pissing everybody off! He's missing games left and right!

VO: He missed two games, guy. Only one of his teammates has played in more games than he has. Have you been to a game? Do they look distracted? Or is the media just saying they're distracted?

RSF: Look, I just can't take this guy anymore. The sooner we get rid of him, the better!

I'm just completely baffled. Every person you hear who calls the radio says the same thing. "Sure, he's good, I like him as a player, but I just can't take it anymore."

And I'm thinking, "can't take WHAT anymore?" And the hosts are at the point where it's just become truth that there is officially some "thing" that warrants a trade of Manny, and they don't even ask the caller what "it" is they can't take anymore.

It's funny, I just came from JoS where someone said the same thing, and I basically said, the media ripped him for not talking to them for years. He was chided for shutting up and playing (playing incredibly, too). And now that he answers their questions, he's ripped for that. But no matter what he says, the media will twist it around to make it say what they want it to say.

I wish that the media would shut up, not Manny. Especially if they're gonna take private stuff and use it to get people to hate Manny.

Well, there is the whole Shoved-The-64-Yr-Old-Traveling-Secretary-For-Not-Being-Able-To-Fill-An-Unreasonable-Ticket-Request Incident. That doesn't reflect particularly well on Manny. And he really should have been playing Friday night against the MFYs; he had just had 2 straight days off, the game itself was of tremendous importance in the standings, and it's pretty clear watching him for the past few games that his knee may be bothering him, but it's not preventing him from producing at the plate or playing the field.

But relax; despite all the trade rumors, and all the media folks and EEI-callers who are lighting their torches and sharpening their pitchforks to run him out of town, he's not going anywhere. Not this season, at least. I will say, a month ago I would have said it was an absolutely certainty that the Sox would pick up Manny's '09 option; now I'd put it at 50/50 at best. And that's really a shame; I would have liked him to end his career in Boston.

Well, it certainly would have been nice if Manny would have hustled down the line to try to break up the no-hitter in the 7th tonight. Good thing Pedroia and Youks finally kept this for being a really embarrassing evening.

I'm a huge Manny fanboy who wears a Manny t-shirt to the gym all the time, and I couldn't care less about how he wears his uniform or the length of his hair. And I agree that the usual assholes in the Boston media have singled him out for unfair treatment for years now. But that incident with the traveling secretary was witnessed (and reported) by a lot of people, and was flat out ugly and wrong. It left a bad taste in my mouth, and I'm not gonna excuse it by saying another player would have gotten a pass from the media on it. There's a lot of great, goofy stuff about Manny's public persona that I've long found endearing, but this was a reminder to me that we never truly know any of these guys.

Still doesn't mean that I want him run out of town and playing elsewhere.

I thought it was only reported by McAdam and only a few people were around, and one told him about it. I just doubt Manny took hold of the guy and threw him to the ground. If there really was something that resembled "assault," there would've been serious consequences.

But I still say Manny is treated differently than others. A-Rod is out cheating on his wife all the time (and pimping home runs); Pettitte goes and lies about and then admits to cheating at baseball. But nobody's talking about how the team just can't put up with it anymore. If anything they talk about what a great job those guys do not getting distracted on the field.

I just think the media doesn't like Manny and they wanna run him outta town, so they take any chance to make it appear like he's a bad guy who doesn't try hard, etc.

Look at the Youk fight thing. People came right out and assumed it was because Youk surely must've been mad at Manny's laziness or unwillingness to stand up for his teammates. And everyone accepted it as truth. I'm sitting there looking at my pics of the Rays fight and Manny is right in the pile with everyone else! Sure enough we finally find out it was something completely different. I remember hearing Buck say what really happened a week later or something, and being like, Wait, what did he just say?? The truth quietly had come out. Why is no one talking about that? Somebody in the media started that lie and I never heard an apology. And I feel like a lot of the stuff being said now is lies, too. Manny missed two games, and even came right out and said that his knee hurt and that people would be crazy to think he faked it. Yet people go right on assuming he faked it, and it goes right into the pile of "antics."

It's true that no writers saw the incident, but that's hardly proof that it didn't happen (which is what I assume you're implying). It seems far more likely that it did happen, given that:

a) Sean McAdam is one of the more fair, responsible members of the Sox reporter beat (which is an admittedly low hurdle),b) More importantly, his editor, Art Martone, is definitely one of the most rational, intelligent and fair minded journalists among the New England sports media (certainly in comparison to the Herald and Globe), and it's pretty hard to imagine that he would let a story of that nature run unless he had sufficient reason to believe that it was true. As an aside, it's a shame that Art no longer writes that much about the Sox; he was the best baseball columnist in New England back around '98-'02.3) Most importantly, McCormick said that Manny apologized, and Manny said that 'we fixed it'. If it didn't happen, what would he have had to apologize for?

Actually, the Projo article reported that it occurred before "several onlookers" so you're wrong about that part. I was wrong about the reported by several people part, I supposed I should have said "reported by one relatively reputable Sox beat writer whose editor has a solid reputation for integrity and likely wouldn't have allowed the story to run if he wasn't comfortable with the source and it's veracity". But since you're not trying to claim that it didn't happen, I don't know why you're so hung up on the 'leak' aspect, unless you're trying to slam the Sr Members of the Sox' front office.

But the news from the past 24 hours makes this all water under the bridge anyway...